It’s that time of year. Many homeowners dread spring cleaning, but it’s a necessary task when you consider how many things typically get overlooked as part of every-day cleaning. You might vacuum, wash dishes, and do laundry regularly, but there are plenty of other tasks that probably don’t get done.

Here are few things that you should include in your spring cleaning checklist.

1. Ceiling Fans

You might not be able to see it, but there is probably a thick layer of dust on top of the blades of your ceiling fans. Now, imagine turning them on and allowing all that collected dust to make its way into the air that you breathe in.

For this reason, it’s essential that your ceiling fans are a part of your spring cleaning session. You can use a vacuum cleaner with an extended nozzle, a duster, or even a damp cloth to get rid of all that piled-up dust.

2. Underneath Large Appliances

You might vacuum your floors on a regular basis, but over time, a lot of dust and debris can make their way underneath your large appliances. Be sure to pull out the refrigerator, oven, washer, and dryer and clean the areas that have been covered by these appliances throughout the year.

3. Utensil Drawers

Once a year, you may want to pull out your utensil drawers, take everything out, and clean the inside of them thoroughly, including the back, sides, and corners. Make sure you let them dry completely before you replace all of your utensils.

4. Coffee Makers

Not only should the actual coffee pot be cleaned out, but so should the filter. Be sure to take your coffee machine apart every so often to give it a good cleaning in warm water mixed with white vinegar.

5. Oven

It’s easy for your oven to collect a layer of hard-to-remove grime at the base or along the sides of the interior. All that grease spilling over from your casseroles or the dripped cheese from those oven-baked pizzas can build up a layer of stubborn, caked-on grease that will need to be removed.

If you’ve got a self-cleaning oven, your job just got that much easier. But if you don’t, you’ll need a few hours to allow oven-cleaning products to lift all that built-up grime, or else you’ll be using a lot of elbow grease to scrape it off that hard way.

6. Pillows

When was the last time you tossed your pillows into the washing machine? Pillow cases can only do so much to protect the pillows underneath, which are susceptible to being infested with skin oils, dead skin cells, dust, and even spiders, to name a few.

In fact, you shouldn’t even wait until spring cleaning time to wash your pillows. Instead, they should probably be washed once every month or two.

7. Window Screens

Window screens are not only meant to help keep critters out as you allow fresh air indoors, they’re also meant to help trap dust and debris. After a while, window screens can become inundated with particles that can limit their effectiveness. Not only that, window screens that are filled with dirt just look disgusting.

You may be able to wash out all that dirt by simply spraying them with a hose. For more stubborn debris, you will have to remove the screens from their frames and soak them in warm, soapy water before spraying them down and replacing them.

8. Drapery

It’s easy for all your window treatments to absorb odors in the home. Not only that, they can also get dusty and dirty over time. In addition to being unsightly, this can also be a potential health issue for anyone in the home with allergies or asthma.

Depending on the fabric and size of your drapes, you may be able to toss them into the washer. Otherwise, you may want to have them dry cleaned to make sure any delicate materials are handled with care.

9. Shower Curtains

Shower curtains get wet on a daily basis, and unless you thoroughly dry them after every shower, they’ll typically stay wet for hours. This is the ideal breeding ground for mold and mildew. Again, this is an item that should be cleaned much more frequently than once a year at spring cleaning time.

You can clean them by adding them to the washing machine along with your towels. Just make sure to let them drip dry rather than putting them in the dryer.

10. Telephones

More and more homeowners are opting to ditch their home lines in favor of their cell phones. A land line is just another added expense that many homeowners no longer require when they’ve got their cell phones to communicate with the outside world. But if you’re one of the minority homeowners who still has a traditional telephone hooked up to a land line, you may want to give those receivers a good cleaning.

So many hands and mouths make contact with telephone receivers, so imagine how much illness-causing bacteria or viruses may be on these things! Don’t forget to disinfect all the phones in your home, and while you’re at it, clean your smartphones too.

Final Thoughts

Spring cleaning might not be fun, but it’s got to be done. And to make the most of this labor-intensive job, make sure you’ve got everything covered so you can enjoy a thoroughly clean home throughout the remaining months of the year.